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say and that means that the relationship with parliament as oppose to
with government is a very important one.
We’ve heard a lot of colleagues speak about the importance of the
independence of the ombudsman office, we’ve heard about of its
origins in Sweden and we’ve also heard of the modern institution in
Sweden and we’ve also being told that in Sweden the ombudsman
is appointed by parliament not by the government of the day. That
model is common through much of the world now, ombudsman are
known as parliamentary ombudsman their reporting arrangement
is the parliament and not the government. That independence is
vital particularly with members of the public because members of
the public need to believe that we there as neutral arbitraries that
we will look at the cases on their own merits that we are not part of
the apparatus of the government and therefore biased against the
individual citizen. Ombudsman institution can be seen as part of the
democratic accountability process. We are charged with holding public
services to account and reporting to parliament about their work
particularly when things do not go as they should.
Given the importance of the relationship with parliament we can think
of some key characteristics which give us the best possible institutional
configuration. Preferably as we have also heard from colleagues 3 rd INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON OMBUDSMAN INSTITUTIONS
ombudsman should be established as offices of the constitution or at
the very least of statute. They should report to their parliament having
the power to make annual reports but also special reports as they thing
fit the specially the case in respect of decisions of bodies jurisdiction
not to implement their findings. The ability to ask to parliament to hold
government bodies to account is essential where recommendations of
the ombudsman are not binding. The appointment of the ombudsman
should be and usually is by vote in parliament, the best arrangements
use open recruitment processes to select a candidate or candidates
for consideration by parliament. They conducted by parliamentarians
who are not members of the government with the administration
undertaken by the officials who support the parliament not government
staff. And sometimes we see examples where recruitment processes are
supported by independent assessors that ombudsman from another
jurisdiction help to say whether this person is qualified to serve as an
ombudsman. Those are quite important.

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